Diplomats in Libya Sought More Security, Republicans Say

A burnt building at the US consulate compound in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi. Photographer: Gianluigi Guercia /AFP via Getty Images

Oct. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Republican lawmakers said U.S.
officials in Libya made requests for added security in Benghazi
that were turned down in Washington before the Sept. 11 attack
that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other
Americans.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman
Darrell Issa of California and Representative Jason Chaffetz of
Utah, a panel member, sent a letter to Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton today saying their information about requests
for more security came from “multiple U.S. federal government
officials” they didn’t name.

Republicans are elevating their criticism of President
Barack Obama’s administration for providing an initial
assessment that the attack began as a spontaneous reaction
during protests against an anti-Islam film made in the U.S.
Administration officials have since called the episode a
terrorist attack.

The Republicans, who said their committee plans an Oct. 10
hearing on security failures in Benghazi, cited in their letter
what they said were 13 security incidents spanning six months
before the attack.

“Based on information provided to the committee by
individuals with direct knowledge of events in Libya, the attack
that claimed the ambassador’s life was the latest in a long line
of attacks on Western diplomats and officials in Libya in the
months leading up to September 11, 2012,” the two lawmakers
wrote. “It was clearly never, as administration officials once
insisted, the result of a popular protest.”

Clinton Cooperation

In a letter to Issa that was released by the State
Department late today, Clinton pledged to produce witnesses for
the panel and otherwise work with committee lawmakers probing
security at the embassy.

“I appreciate that you and your committee are deeply
interested in finding out what happened leading up to and during
the attacks in Benghazi, and are looking for ways to prevent it
from happening again,” Clinton wrote. “I share that
commitment.”

Clinton also said that she has completed appointments to an
Accountability Review Board that will examine the record on
security arrangements at the embassy. The board is led by Thomas
Pickering, who served in six ambassadorial posts including
Russia and Israel as well as in top State Department posts
during more than 40 years in the foreign service.

Board Members

Other panelists include: retired Admiral Michael Mullen,
former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Catherine Ann
Bertini, a former executive director of the UN’s food program
and a professor of public administration and international
affairs at Syracuse University in Syracuse, N.Y.; Richard
Shinnick, a retired Foreign Service officer who oversaw the
State Department’s Bureau of Overseas Building Operations during
a 2008-2009 period; and Hugh Turner, a retired CIA operations
officer who represents the intelligence community on the board.

Asked today about the Republican letter to Clinton, White
House press secretary Jay Carney said, “Embassy security is a
matter that is in the purview of the State Department.” A
security review by Clinton is “under way as we speak” as well
as an FBI investigation, he said.

‘Threat Streams’

Clinton told reporters last month that “an evaluation on
threat streams” had been made for all U.S. missions before the
anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the U.S.

“The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has
said we had no actionable intelligence that an attack on our
post in Benghazi was planned or imminent,” Clinton said on
Sept. 18.

Shawn Turner, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of
National Intelligence issued a statement Sept. 28 that the
intelligence community’s assessment of the attack had evolved
and that some of the people involved “were linked to groups
affiliated with, or sympathetic to, al-Qaeda.”

In the letter to Clinton outlining security incidents in
Libya, a number of them previously reported, the committee
Republicans said that in June a posting on a Facebook page
sympathetic to former Libyan ruler Muammar Qaddafi “trumpeted”
awareness that Stevens was taking regular morning jogs around
Tripoli with members of his security detail.

They said that the posting threatened Stevens and included
a picture of him. Stevens stopped his morning runs for a week
after that, and then resumed them, according to the letter,
which was reported by the Associated Press earlier today.